It was an old computer, probably about aged fifteen at the time, which I guess, in human terms, was roughly equivalent to the age of my granny who lived into her mid nineties, but who clearly had more memory than my Apple Mac, though much of it was also random! And I suppose, just like people, when something bad happens, it's almost always unexpected, regardless of age. So the day my computer packed in was totally without warning and totally unwanted. After all, it contained school daily notes, timetables, worksheets, exams, class records and lists and every other conceivable administration document that I might have collected during its lifetime in my classroom. So when a friend and computer expert had tried every remedy known to modern man to fix it and even to attempt to retrieve the information from its hard drive, but without any success and then pronounced its demise, I felt like part of my life had died with it, which, I suppose, in a way it had. It was like losing an old friend with whom I had conversed every single working day before the rest of the school had arrived, never mind the instant disappearance of fifteen years of hard work and for a while I wasn't exactly sure what to do or how to cope with my loss.Several things softened the blow somewhat slightly. First, I had, over the years, saved copies of many of the documents on floppies and while I had been less consistent in doing in the past tow or three years and knew the list was very much incomplete, I also guessed there would be enough old files and templates to salvage some good from what seemed a hopeless situation at the time. Secondly, in the store was an identical computer, another old Apple Mac that had sat there for several years, not because it was broken but because it had been replace by a bright, shiny new and up to date PC. I knew that it probably only needed a quick dust down, a new battery to keep its memory functioning and hopefully I could load what files I still possessed, no matter how ancient and the thing would fire up as normal. The third thing that also helped to ease the burden of loss was that for the past five or six years, I had been saving most of the school administration and financial documents and governor files on my school laptop. So all was not lost, but for a while it felt like it had been and in truth, an awful lot had disappeared and only I knew the amount of time and effort it had taken over the years, to put it there and now it was gone.
But my loss in no way even begins to compare with that of Job, the wealthiest man of his time and the godliest. What a rare combination! For no other reason would the writer of the book of Job record 'This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil' and also 'He was the greatest man among all the people of the East.' But to lose all his livestock including camels, sheep, cattle and donkeys, amounting to over eleven thousand animals, in tragic circumstances is bad enough but to then have to deal with the deaths of all ten of your children, killed in equally tragic and unexpected conditions at the same time and have to think about arranging ten funerals for sons and daughters whom you were sure would outlive you, must have left the poor guy in total despair.
Time to renounce his faith in God? Time to get angry? Time to wallow in self pity? Time to take out your depression on others? Time maybe even to contemplate suicide? All perfectly possible ways to deal with such grief and the route that others might have taken when faced with such torment. But not Job. No, his response is frighteningly sobering for he falls to the ground in worship and says 'Naked I came from my mother's womb,and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.' What a testimony to his faith in God. I wonder could I have spoken with the same sincerity in the face of such overwhelming grief?
And even after he became so physically unwell, witnessed the lack of support from his wife, had to leave home because of his illness and found little comfort but plenty of 'advice' from people he had thought to be friends, Job's faith was still unshaken and once he had forgiven his friends for their unhelpful words, God blessed the last years years of his life in a way he could never have thought possible by doubling the amount of livestock he had originally possessed, allowing him to be a father ten more times, giving him the most beautiful daughters in the whole land and preserving his life for another one hundred and forty years until he witnessed the birth of his great grandchildren.
But there is one little verse in the very last chapter that sums up Job's experience of God and maybe needs to be our experience too. In verse 5 he says 'My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you.' Yes Job, the godliest man of his time, discovered that a deeper relationship with his Creator was all that mattered, not the way we was blessed with material things either in his early life or in his last days. But to see God in every aspect of his life opened his eyes to what faith is all about.
As I stood beside the remains of both my parents in the past few years, I became strangely aware of how true were the words of Job for when we leave this earth, we go with nothing except or faith and the assurance that God is waiting to welcome us. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
